


you and me (that's a family)

by womanaction



Series: AA Missing Scenes & Episode Tags [4]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, also Troy isn't really in this but his presence is, i haven't written so many oneshots in years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:12:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: (Friend)shippy tag for 5x9 "VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing." Annie and Abed try to define what they are to each other. Some Abed/Rachel.





	you and me (that's a family)

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I've written 3 AA oneshots in the past week. Who am I? A productive member of a fandom? Pshaw.

“Did you mean it?”

She’s distracted, he knows it. Annie had been looking through the Craiglist ads glumly. He wasn’t enthused about the situation himself, although it did contain a lot of comic possibility. Maybe they could hold an interview montage with laughably bad candidates – it might not pay rent, but it might help them forget for an hour or two that it’s just them now.

“Hmm?” she says absently. When Annie’s distracted, she never notices what he says. He once recounted to her an entire season of Inspector Spacetime when she asked him how his day was while she was doing homework. It was mildly entertaining. Now, Abed actually wants her attention.

“Yesterday. What you said about me being like your brother.”

She finally looks up. “You mean the time machine story? I didn’t make it up, but I guess I was doing the same thing you were doing with Rachel. Trying to make connections that weren’t that strong. I mean, Rachel may own a Waterpik but does she arrange her toiletries by color?” Annie makes a “pshh” sound with her mouth and looks back at the screen.

He doesn’t know the answer to that, actually. In their technical month of compressed dating, he’s only been over to Rachel’s place once, and she became suspicious when he was in her bathroom too long. “Discounting any resemblance between me and your actual brother, you said that I was like a brother to you. Is that true?”

“I said that?” He watches her as she bites her lip. He knows that’s a tell – Annie only does it when she’s lying or nervous about something. She doesn’t answer his question directly, another Annie tactic. He’s picked up on a lot of those since they started living together. “Why do you ask?”

Abed shrugs, acting casual but watching her closely. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of you like a sister. On the other hand, I don’t have a sister, and you do have a brother. So if anyone should know, it should be you.”

Annie is frequently irrational, but she loves to believe that she’s motivated purely by logic. He recognizes this as a trait in himself. He hears her sharp intake of air, but he’s not quite sure what that signifies in this context. She’s still looking at the computer, but her eyes aren’t moving over the text. Finally, she says, “You’re not really like my brother, Abed.”

The statement is ambiguous, but he thinks she probably means it both ways. “So why did you say it?” he asks, genuinely curious.

Annie sighs. It’s a sound he’s heard a lot lately, since it’s been just the two of them. They’ve been getting under each other’s skin more without a buffer. “I don’t know, Abed. I just said it. I guess I was trying to get you to agree to let Anthony move in with us and…it’s easier.”

“Easier than what?”

“Than figuring out another label for us, I guess.”

Abed considers this for a moment. “We’re roommates.”

“But we’re also friends,” she points out.

“Close friends,” he agrees.

“But not best friends.”

The thought makes him momentarily sad. “No…not best friends. But close. Second-best friends?”

Annie smiles at that, although her eyes look sad. “Yeah. Second-best friends.”

“At least until we finish the handshake,” he adds, only half-joking. They’ll never have the same sort of friendship that he has with Troy, he knows that, but sometimes with Annie things can be almost as good, if different. Sort of like a combination of Troy and Rachel and a third thing he hasn’t figured out, maybe something unique to Annie.

Thinking about Rachel and Annie brings him to the thought: _We kissed_ , but for some reason he doesn’t say that. They were Han and Leia, after all. It doesn’t count. Although, if they were like brother and sister, they could have been Luke and Leia, who also kissed, even if it was weird and incestuous.

Kissing Annie-as-Leia hadn’t felt weird and incestuous. It had felt exciting, unlike anything he had felt before. Unlike anything _Han_ had felt before, he corrects himself, although a rogueish smuggler’s threshold for excitement had to be considerably higher than his. But Han loved Leia, so kissing her would be exciting, he thinks. Especially the first time.

Kissing Rachel was fine. He liked to watch her eyes light up behind her glasses and the way her breath sped up. Her chapstick tasted like real vanilla. Kissing her wasn’t _Star Wars_ , but it was fine. Good, even. Pleasant.

Abed suddenly wonders if Annie is expecting him to say anything else. She’s looking at the screen and reading again, but there’s a faint blush in her cheeks. He had seen that blush many times before, but now he is remembering seeing it under a layer of orange paint.

She notices him looking at her and gives him one of those little, secret smiles. The Annie-in-private smiles, as he’s categorized them. “That game was pretty fun, though,” she says almost shyly.

“We should play again some time,” he agrees enthusiastically. “Maybe invite the rest of the group over and play in teams. They won’t know what’s hit them.”

Her smile grows wider. “Partners?”

“Always,” he says immediately. He points finger guns at her and shoots. “Bang bang bang!”

“Yee-haw.”


End file.
